Centinela Valley ordered to cease excessive school board pay by Los Angeles County

Vicente Bravo was principal of Lawndale High School when it was named a California Distinguished School, a big feat for a struggling school district. After questioning the district’s car allowances, he was sent back to the classroom with a sizable pay cut. Bravo has since left the district and works with the LACOE.
Steve McCrank — Staff Photographer

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The Los Angeles County Office of Education has ordered Centinela Valley Union High School District to halt the potentially illegal compensation it pays to its school board members — the elected officials who made Superintendent Jose Fernandez one of the highest-compensated K-12 public school leaders in the nation.

The reprimand is the first indication that the Centinela Valley school district has violated either the spirit or the letter of the law since this news organization initially reported in early February that Fernandez’s compensation package totaled $663,000 in 2013.

While the board members are not getting rich from their payments — their stipends and allowances total $1,040 a month — they are getting paid much more than they should under state law, according to a bulletin issued Thursday by LACOE, and much more than any other school board in the South Bay, according to documents obtained by the Los Angeles News Group.

California’s Education Code limits how much school board members can be compensated based on the size of the districts they lead. In Centinela Valley, which has about 6,600 students, board members can earn a total compensation of no more than $240 a month. That is exactly how much the district’s board members earn as their stipend for attending monthly board meetings. But in addition to that, they are paid a $200 cellphone allowance and a $600 car allowance.

The latter sparked LACOE’s order to cease payments.

“Effective immediately, if your governing board members are receiving additional stipends or allowances that cause the EC (Education Code) limits to be exceeded, these payments must cease,” reads the LACOE bulletin from Executive Director of Business and Finance Patricia Smith.

Though the bulletin was issued to all school districts in the county — and makes no mention of Centinela by name — LACOE spokesman Kostas Kalaitzidis said it came in direct response to questions from the Los Angeles News Group regarding Centinela’s board compensation.

“It has come to our attention that, in some instances, districts are not in compliance with the Education Code because they have exceeded the compensation limits or because their Board members are receiving allowances or stipends, i.e. car allowance, in addition to the stated compensation limits,” reads the bulletin from LACOE, which provides financial services for school districts in the county and, according to its website, is responsible for “ensuring fiscal solvency and compliance with state laws.”

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DISTRICT RESPONSE

In response to the bulletin, the district issued a statement early Friday afternoon saying it is “immediately terminating” payment of the allowances to board members. The statement pointed out that the bulletin was directed to all K-12 and community college districts in California.

“The District has not received any communication from LACOE specific to the District’s Governing Board compensation,” the statement said. “The District also is aware that other districts in Los Angeles County currently are paying stipends to Board Members.”

Former school board member Frank Talavera criticized the board’s compensation.

“I think it’s unethical — it’s a shame,” said Talavera, who was ousted in 2009. Talavera said that while he was on the board he never received the $600 month car allowance.

In late 2009, four of the five current board members — Hugo Rojas, Gloria Ramos, Rocio Pizano and President Maritza Molina — all approved the contract that allowed Fernandez’s compensation to balloon year over year to $663,000 in the 2013 calendar year. The contract also enabled him to take a low-interest, $910,000 loan to purchase a home in Ladera Heights. Fernandez exercised that option in late 2012.

Among the nine other standalone school districts in the South Bay, the next highest paid board members govern Torrance Unified, which is four times the size of Centinela. They earn about $4,800 a year, or less than half of what their counterparts in Centinela receive.

The monthly stipends for other districts in the area range from zero for Palos Verdes Peninsula and Redondo Beach to $252 for Lawndale). Although board members in Redondo Beach do not get a board stipend, they are the only elected board members in the area besides Centinela to get an automatic allowance for travel. Theirs is $250 monthly. (Based on their size, they are allowed to receive a $240 monthly stipend). In Lennox, in addition to the $240 board stipend, elected trustees are provided a cellphone and computer during their tenure, and the district covers their monthly payments for Internet access, which range from $50 to $80.

In Los Angeles Unified, where the position is considered a full-time job, the seven board members — one of whom is based in the South Bay — earned as much as $46,000 annually as of 2007, according to media reports. However, board members who have other employment earned $26,000. LAUSD did not respond to a request for updated figures sent March 10.

SOURCE OF CONTROVERSY

School board members can be reimbursed for actual expenses they incur, while performing their duties, according to the LACOE bulletin. To avoid violating the compensation limits, they must provide appropriate documentation and then they may be reimbursed.

“If the Board Member is paid a flat amount, the amount is additional compensation,” the bulletin explains.

To spend $600 a month on mileage, at the federal mileage rate of 56 cents a mile set by the IRS, each Centinela board member would have to drive 1,071 miles every month. Since the district’s three comprehensive high schools — Hawthorne, Leuzinger and Lawndale — are all located within two miles of each other, that means the board members would have to travel between the schools about 18 times a day, seven days a week. (Its two alternative programs, Lloyde Continuation School and Family First Charter School for adults, are both on the Lawndale High campus.) The Texas-shaped district is, at the farthest points, four miles wide and five miles long.

The district also provides board members medical benefits and a $150,000 life insurance policy. For a time, starting in 2010, Centinela provided board members a retirement plan administered by a private, nonprofit company based in Orange County called PARS, which stands for Public Agency Retirement Services. But a Centinela spokesperson on Friday said the district no longer provides the benefit.

Centinela’s car and cellphone allowances — which also have been granted to administrators — have been a source of controversy before.

Vicente Bravo, once an award-winning principal at Lawndale High and a former administrator in the district office, questioned the legitimacy of the allowances a few years ago, even though they boosted his own salary from $133,000 to $141,000.

“I would have to drive to Vegas four times and back just to even come close to meeting that,” Bravo said of the car allowance in a Daily Breeze article about the matter in December 2010.

Reached by phone this week, Bravo said: “I just couldn’t understand why anyone would need (an allowance) that large for a district that small.”

After raising concerns about the allowances, Bravo was demoted back to the classroom just before his 18-year tenure in Centinela Valley ended. He now works as a LACOE administrator, but spoke to the Los Angeles News Group as a former employee of Centinela Valley, not a representative of the county office.

In the statement issued Friday, Centinela officials noted that they had sought legal advice from two law firms on the travel allowances.

The first review of the existing policy occurred in early December 2010. In a letter dated Dec. 7 — four days after the story about Bravo was published in the Daily Breeze — an attorney from the district-hired firm Luna & Glushon reviewed the policy of granting board members an automatic car allowance in lieu of reimbursement for miles actually traveled. In a densely worded four-page opinion, Dennis Hernandez concluded that it was legal.

“This section authorizes school board members to be compensated for traveling expenses incurred resulting from their duties as board members,” he wrote. “This section does not state the manner in which local board members may be compensated for said travel.”

For some reason, two months later, another attorney, Ruben Duran from Meyers Nave, issued a follow-up three-page opinion. His conclusion was more cautious, although his short answer on whether the practice is legal was yes.

“There is no requirement that the district reimburse Board members only for ‘actual’ expenses,” he wrote.

But he added: “While the legal standards discussed above authorize the District to maintain a vehicle allowance for its Board members, the District should weigh the benefits of the program against the risk that the public may view the program with suspicion.”

Duran further stated that if the district cannot adequately explain the policy, “it may be more prudent to simply reimburse Board members for mileage actually traveled.”